NO you idiot why do you think people are protesting?!?!?! State government have been cutting grants, I am from a low-income family and this past year I hardly qualified for any grants I had to pull about 20K in loans for the past 2 semesters. People are angry for a reason, not just for shits & gigs.

I find it strange that the people who commented above me missed the spirit of this.
Anonymous – Most people in the United States are awful at investing. That’s just a fact. I don’t think that his poor judgement in investing should result in his daughter not being to attend the school of her choice.

RGates – I’m sure she does, but there’s enough need-based applicants nowadays that they can’t possibly support everyone. Just saying that as a college student who is observing the economic situation of those around him.

Reality – First off, nice name. I like it. It gives real believability to your argument, because who can deny Reality? Except, like, Renee Descartes and Morpheus. But that’s beside the point. Anyway, this is really just my opinion, but I think that a girl who has worked her ass off for her entire life to get a 4.0, should be able to go to Northwestern, Brown, Berkeley, U of M, or where ever she desires. Student loans are also extremely difficult to deal with, especially if you are already impoverished. And saying “try someplace attainable like the rest of the population” seems to be depressingly okay with the status quo for a girl who obviously has earned greater.

Protest the damn college, there is no excuse for the high prices they charge
You pay thousands every semester the government gives them money and they build parking lots and tear them out before anyone even parks in them
they charge the students in housing $15 for a pinhole in the wall
they teach you communist, socialist, reformist ideas and their professors
point their fingers at the banks and the government while they take their
money from, you, the banks and the government. I’ll gladly protest with you
JUST PROTEST FOR JUSTICE AND BE PROUD TO BE ABLE TO PROTEST

Hey Shmuck, I notice you say you DID this (past tense). Today, there are multitudes of kids applying for every possible scholarship/grant, etc. If there were actually jobs to be had out there, this girl could work her way through school but in case you hadn’t noticed, people who already have a college degree are fighting the kids for Walmart jobs for Gods sake. Lost the arrogance just because you made it prior to the economic meltdown. A side point folks, the man doesn’t say he invested in houses as an investment strategy, for all we know, his house is under water by that amount.

I’m in college and have a 4.0 gpa, and while I do have a scholarship, I know how competitive it is for students to secure scholarships now. It takes more than simply having a 4.0 any more.

As for “investments,” are you honestly ignorant enough to think that, after decades of housing being a secure investment, he lost $70k because he made a “bad” investment? So did millions! Owning a home shouldn’t be as precarious as investing in stocks.

It seems like a lot of people on here should have paid more attention in college themselves. Most likely, you are NOT the one percent who benefits from trickle down economics. It’s time you stopped treating the people who are just like you like trash simply because you hope to one day win the lottery or hit it big with a “made for TV” device that will make you millions. You’re dreaming!

You’re old, white, straight, without disability, and NEVERTHELESS a LEFTIST: so WHY ARE YOU WHINING?!? According to your COMRADES, *YOU* ARE TO BLAME!!! Join a Tea Party and talk to SANE people who will make America great again.

I like how ed says if you’re old, white, straight and with no disabilities come and join us. So what if I am black, gay and disabled? Am I still invited? Nothing like racism to remind me why no what I want nothing to do with the Tea Partiers!

lovely to know that you dont need to pass an IQ test to join the National Guard… I guess your college, and reality, failed to show you that not everyone can do any jobs. But yeah, i guess that lesson totally flew over your head.

There are a lot of great personal testimonials out there like this. While cons are busy blaming the 99% for their own predicament, the robber barons are making out like…well like Robber Barons, stealing the wealth we have created with our labor and moving it offshore to tax havens. This class warfare WILL end, one way or another. The only question is whether the system is too inflexible for the depth of real reforms that are needed.

It’s great your daughter worked hard through the first 12 years, now she can work hard through the next four. She can get a job and go to school and take out some loans like most of society or she can join the military and come away from school debt-free and have the opportunity to be a true leader.

Where do the entitlements stop? Teachers can’t fail kids in schools, college can’t be a burden on anyone anymore, an employee can’t be fired. When will personal responsibility resurface in America? It better happen quick.

Join the military and be way debt free? Look at how my soldiers have gone to war in the last 10 years and the big banks foreclosed on their homes. Plus what if going into the military isn’t an option for you? I guess everyone seems to think the only answers to this problem is to work your but off at a job(that doesn’t exist), apply for scholarships (and hope to be better than a million others) or join the military. Apparently for this girl to go to college only three options exist and if she can’t do those she just shit out of luck.

Where is accountability for the so-called leaders committing fraud or the bankers who lied, cheated and stole? If hard work and sacrifice was all it it took we’d be a nation of millionaires and wouldn’t be having this discussion. Go put your head back in the sand and ignore the reality. We’ll wake you when they outsource YOUR job/industry then you can tell us again about how perfect you are and how “personal accountability” saved the day. Maybe you could get back some of the money you invested… oh wait I guess that would be an “entitlement” eh?

Another American who has overextended himself. Too much consumption. He’s blaming others, not himself. Apparently he feels he is too good for colleges that cost less and would give her a scholarship. He is an example of what’s wrong. We need more personal accountability in this country.

I’m asking this question out of curiosity, I’m not trying to pick on your/his daughter. With a 4.0 GPA can’t she receive a scholarship? It might not be at her #1 choice in schools, but with a 4.0 GPA a school will give her a 100% scholarship.

Yep, I lost much more than $70K on the housing market. I am waaaay under water, and barely, very very barely, I am still paying the mortgage. I have cut from my budget much more that college: clothing, car repairs, plumbing repairs, much more. I have been without a job for eighteen months, and my wife carries both of us while he reach the end of our devastated savings.

All that said, if I were to write about college, I would perhaps complain about their fees going up a 21%. But I would not try to attract pity upon myself: I am a grown up. When houses looked like ATM to which I had the key. I was foolish enough to play the dice even when I knew they were loaded. So, when I march with the OWS crowd, the sign I carry is not one of personal misfortune: instead, t’s one of collective empowerment. It says “I am the 99%, and I ready to take my rights back from the 1%”.

You are perpetuating ideas that lead us here. I assume you daughter actually wants to go to college, and from your attitude it seems that she/you expect that you (the parents) should be paying for it. Also, you appear the believe that this “4.0 GPA” student (honestly high school GPA tells nothing of college performance) is entitled to go to some university that cost in excess of 70k cash plus loans and grants/scholarships. To burst your bubble, this mentality is a non-starter post recession. I believe that everyone should be able to go to college. However, your expectations must match your means. If she truly desires to go but cannot afford college, then 2 years of community college is the starting point. A slightly loftier and costlier endeavor is to go to a state university (most are in the 20,000s/yr range) and between federal direct loans, federal/state grants, and a part time (30hr/wk) job this is again a very attainable. Many of us have gone this route. Many of us have completed this path. Many of us have been successful from it. None of us that have had to struggle through school will pity you.

So because she does well in school she “deserves” to go to one of the most prestigious institutions in the country? If you’re so desperate, sell your house and use the money to send her. You can rent from month to month somewhere. I don’t understand what the housing market has to do with your savings, unless you’re implying that you were going to take equity out of your home to do it. Which is a bad idea. Be a man and don’t try and garner pity on the internet from a bunch of random people who you don’t care about.

He sure is the 99%. Whining over bullshit. MOST people don’t pay for their kid’s entire college. And they don’t whine like little bitches about it.

And if your house lost that much value then you are either an idiot and bought during the height of the bubble or you didn’t actually lose that much since it was never WORTH what it was valued at in 2008. If you bought in, say, 2004, then your house value is not $70,000 less than you paid.

If your daughter has a 4.0 she should get a scholarship to go to college. Alternatively she could get student loans. However, with the current price of college (the next bubble to burst IMO), unless she wants to be a scientist or medical doctor (or something that TRULY requires a college education), she’s better off not going. At the very least she could go to community college for the first two years (it’s incredibly cheaper, everyone should go that route if they are paying, just make sure the credits transfer before hand).

I can’t believe all of the cold blooded comments on here. Higher level education should be free for ALL students with high G.P.A’s. I understand that nothings free and it would effect my taxes,… but GOOD. I want this girl to get into the best college in the country and invent the new cancer fighting drug. I want to invest my tax dollars in her education so in time it would benefit all Americans. I am an Iraq vet who feels no one should be forced to joined the military as a means of getting $ for a good education. The higher the education level for a country, the more it tends to prosper monetarily.

The market collapse was nothing but a pump and dump scheme by the big investment banks – they got us all buying in with our 401ks and other junk retirement plans – that they PUNISH you for not participating in, in leu of actual pensions. (but funny how the government still gets their pensions right?)

Then as all that money is flowing into the market, all the Goldman Sacs alum who sit at the top of all the big banks, and the fed, and just about everywhere else, they all play hot-potato with the investments, pumping them up and pumping them up, and we’re now buying crap through our automated corporate controled 401k’s and then when the bubble is big enough. POP! They sell their shares, and crash the market, taking our retirements with them. But its ok for them, because they made 300 million dollar salaries with bonuses for pumping and dumping our futures.

The whole system is rigged. If you dont realise that yet, and want to attack this man, then you are an idiot – probably barely scraping by yourself through the actions of these scum bankers.

I do not think a lot of people had the success your daughter has had thus far and have been very successful… Pick one the list is long, (Mark Cuban comes to mind for me.!) Maybe she can just go for it and use her skills and develop a skill set that pays well without a MBA. Maybe stick your heads together and start a business that is what I am trying to do with my wife. Then with that success use it as a spring board to pay for a University Degree.

I for one believe the OWS protest movement is not grass roots because it was organized buy socialists in NYC at an artist loft by people from the USA, Canada, Greece, Eqypt and Spain. I read this on Motherjones website a left wing website. When it sprang up all around the world at once it is not credible to a grassroots movement… A schizophrenic list of complaints and Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and William Ayers as their biggest supporters.

Did you see little prXck on the Sculpture in NYC demanding for Bloomberg to come down? He was a Canadian, not even living here just demonstrating, demanding for the Resignation of a US Elected Official??? I hope his a$$ got deported!!!

TO THE OP: Just quit whining on get on with it, if you never had the cash in hand you never lost it if it was only on paper. If you want it you got to cash it out when you get a ROI your comfortable with otherwise you chance losing your gain. I had a family member lose 400,000 in retirement from Lucent back in ’01 her husband cashed his in for 800,000 and reinvested in real estate and died a multimillionaire. You got to make your fortune… Whining aligning yourself with the socialist cry babies is amazing… Unless you and your wife work minimum wages jobs STFU!!!!!

You are potentially part of the scum that got us into this mess. I don’t care about how you flipped houses or what not, I’m more pissed at the speculators that built new houses with the cheapest upgrades possible so they could flip them before the house was built. That robbed thousands and thousands of people of buying their first (or even not first) house and customizing it the way they wanted to. It’s easier and cheaper to put upgrades into a house before it is built to roll it into the mortgage.
Now, you are also potentially part of the scum that drove house prices higher and higher which caused the housing bubble.
Crying about losing money in the housing market collapse is the last thing you should be whining about being poor due to. If you had never invested a penny you’d be much better off than you are now, you wouldn’t have jacked up prices and robbed people of their dreams.
Thanks dude.

Then kill yourself buddy. You were dumb enough to spend the money. Think for yourself…. I didn’t buy a house for a reason during the amazingly wonderful good times of real estate…. and guess what… my other investments made me some goooood cash….. send her to college with the life insurance. Then at least she can be proud of her dad instead of becoming a stripper because you were another sheeple.